Thursday, November 20, 2008

SCIENCE LAB:

We just finished a Chapter about Evolution. I pointed out that we believe in the Creation and that Heavenly Father has made every organism. I even mentioned the comment made by President Monson or Elder Holland (?) saying there would be no point in studying our geneology!- or we'd go back to find the ape on the wall is my great-great- grandfather. Not true. We do believe that we can evolve with our intelligence and such, but throughout the years students will be taught the theory of evolution, so they needed to understand it- even if we disagree. This lab was called Survival of the Chocolates. The students designed their own experiment to see which color of M&M would survive the longest (natural selection: Darwin). This group was playing "tazos" with pesos and M&Ms...creative!

SLINGSHOT! messy but fun...they loved it, good idea guys! (and girl: Caroline)

This group really just wanted to look cool and get their picture taken. They designed a "boxing ring" and dropped their chocolates from a specific height to see which had more cracks, etc. We have such a smart group of students this year!


If the school smelled bad this day, it was because of this! A few groups used a magnifying glass to melt the chocolate, and time the results. There were flames, smoke, etc but all in the name of science!




No Adan, you m ay not eat them until the lab is OVER!




These boys dissolved the M&Ms in water and timed the results. Overall, we didn't have any conclusive evidence as to which color would survive the longest. BUT they did understand natural selection, so it was a success...a delicious success...and yes, we invited Sister Nielsen to this lab- everyone knows she loves chocolate!!!





BUILD-A-BUG!

Here are just a few pictures from our Chapter 5 test! According to which alleles were drawn, students made the bug's genotype and then built the bug with the appropriate phenotype. Look how happy they were...who says students don't like tests?! They even ate them the next day, after I had graded them. (If your son/daughter isn't in these pictures, I'll be posting random ones from other activities...and it'd take a lot of time and space to put pictures up of each of our 60 some students).